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Coming up this Wednesday TCM is offering up The Front Page (Lewis Milestone, 1931). This pre-code screwball comedy co-produced by Howard Hughes is based on a scandalous 1928 Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, two veteran newspaper writers who had worked at rival Chicago papers in the 1920s. While the play raised eyebrows with rough language and double entendres, Milestone’s screen adaption, despite being pre-code, softened the edges a bit, with one example being the creative omission of the last word heard at the end of the play. The TCM trivia page notes how the “last line of the play had to be partly obliterated by the sound of a train because the censors (even of that day) wouldn’t allow the phrase ‘son-of-a-bitch’ to be used in the film.” Still, the original New York Times review observes that “the producers have succeeded in retaining many more of the lines of the play than was anticipated. The censor is in more than one instance virtually defied through ingenious ideas.” Given all the nudie postcards clearly decorating the walls in the background, I’d say the censors were already asleep at the wheel.
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At the core of the film is ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Pat O’Brien) and his unscrupulous editor Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou). Johnson wants to quit the newspaper and get hitched to his fiancée Peggy Grant (Mary Brian). Burns doesn’t want to lose Johnson, and when an escaped killer finds himself hiding in a roll top desk in their press room the excitement and allure of journalism burn bright once again.
Milestone’s follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) shows a radical ability to switch gears as he goes from one of the most serious and powerful anti-war films ever committed to celluloid to here pivoting in mood a full 180 degrees. Instead of a volley of bullets in the trenches we have a rapid-fire volley of words in the workplace. Menjou, who when speaking of trenches more readily comes to mind for his later role in Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), here hits his marks like a true pro. Not everyone shines as bright as Menjou, and some of the bit players that rush in towards the end get a bit tripped up in their delivery.
On Rotten Tomatoes The Front Page gets a 91% rating from the critics but then slides precipitously lower in estimation in its audience score with an unenthusiastic 63%. Such wide divides are not uncommon on Rotten Tomatoes, especially when – as in this case – only 11 critics weigh in compared to almost one thousand users. However in this case I wonder if the wide divide is also based on the fact that several of the film critic reviews are from people who would not think of this as an early talkie but were rather more clued in to its cutting edge. For a film based on a play, it shakes things up with tracking shots and synchronized sound in ways that were, at that time, ambitious. (“It is a fast-paced entertainment and, while its humor is frequently harsh, is assuredly won favor with the audience yesterday afternoon.” – Mordant Hall, NYT, March 20, 1931) Modern critics, keen on context, can also be more forgiving than the average fan. Ephraim Katz, the man behind “The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of World Cinema in a Single Volume” praises The Front Page as “a dynamic, highly entertaining adaptation of the Hecht-MacArthur play that earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Director.” This is followed by: “But Milestone’s subsequent work was oddly uneven. In the next 30 years he turned out mainly routine, uninspired, if technically polished, productions.” Sometimes context can be not-so-forgiving.
As for the Howard Hawks remake, His Girl Friday (1940), film critics and fans are more closely aligned (97% to 90%) whereas with Billy Wilder’s 1974 remake with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, we have them in complete agreement (both land it at 73%). Sometimes, at least of you’re a Howard Hawks fan like myself, the numbers make sense.
